


There's a hole that you fill

by deionei



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Bad Communication, F/M, decaying marriage, hades just loves his wife SO MUCH, he's so terrible
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:07:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23886439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deionei/pseuds/deionei
Summary: Somethin’ ain’t right, to say the least. The way she’s quiet, staring out into the darkness of the underground. The way she’s got that expression that he can never quite read on her face, and Hades hates that expression more than anything.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown), Hermes & Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	1. How easy you are to need

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on my tumblr @divinepithets! shoutout my amazing beta as always ILY moonz @washingtononyourside on here

_I_

The silence is stretching on far longer than he expected it to. Persephone is across from him, just within reach. Her long nails are tapping absently at the hardwood-- she’d brought it down here herself when she’d first married him. The thing is older than some of the shades themselves. She’s staring, but not at him. Out the window, into the dark, the dim, lamplit expansiveness of the underground.  
  


The underground has always been dark-- something the shades had to get accustomed to. The monotony was easy to get used to, living under the bare refraction of un-mined metal and lava, deep in Gaia’s guts. Hades and the shades had long gotten used to the unfathomable dark, deeper than the darkest night and impossibly unending. Even the river was dark, unpleasantly so. Murky and unending, just like the rest of the damn Underground. Hades, however, never had the impetus to change it; after all, he liked the dark. It didn’t burn his eyes the way the sun did, not that he saw the sun very often. No, he saw the sun once a year, and even then, it wasn’t half as bright as when Persephone was in the full swing of summer.   
  


He saw the dying huffs of the sun, or worse, the birthing cries, when it would hit Persephone’s cheek in that cold glint as she looked over the thick cap of snow around the tracks.   
  


But Persephone liked the sun, liked its burning fullness and how it encompassed the whole of Gaia’s surface. She stuck to that strict day-night cycle that Hades had all but shirked, and the constant darkness had bothered her.  
  


She couldn’t tell what time of day it was and Persephone was an agrarian, at heart. No matter how many times she’d been pulled down to Hades’ underworld, she was still a fertility goddess, wasn’t she? She was made for that sort of thing, in constant sync with the earth above. She carved into Gaia’s flesh with the call of sunrise each morning, brought life and foliage and she respected that cycle as any other God from up above would. The same way everything, mortal, God, and in between respected _their_ cycle. Hades brings his wife uptop, allowing her to walk freely upon the skin of the earth.  
  


There was a time when the silence didn’t feel heavy, though Hades couldn’t say how near or far that time was. When the silences felt like something easy, a ritual performed in their private temple. Hades’ own personal house of worship. But then, Hades had never been good at reading people. He only figured out Persephone fully once he actually married her, once she came down to the Underworld and had spent more than a few winters there.  
  


Somethin’ ain’t right, to say the least. The way she’s quiet, staring out into the darkness of the underground. The way she’s got that expression that he can never quite read on her face, and Hades hates that expression more than anything. He hates that he can’t pinpoint what it is. And he’s been seein’ it more and more each winter. As the end of February rolled around, Persephone was readying to shed her wedding veil and spitting out each pomegranate seed in preparation to begin her ascent back to the surface, to the overworld. To bring her gifts back to the world up above.  
  


She loved her duty, loved being the Patroness more than the Lady, the Empress to a stony, iron-fisted Emperor. She always seemed so proud of herself as she stepped onto the train with sweat still fresh on her brow.   
  


The end of the year’s labor, but a happily given one. Persephone loved the mortals, loved them the same way someone loves the birds who frequent the feeder in their yard. She loved to give her flowers, herbs, and spices alongside her mama’s crop, and she loved watching them make use of her gifts.  
  


Persephone loved the sound of her procession blaring their trumpets and the raving of their drums, always loud and incessant and ever growing. Her procession was _always_ growing, because once the mortals figured that Miss– with extra emphasis on her maidenhood– Persephone played favorites and gave extra of her mama’s crop, good spices, pretty flowers and the high quality tobacco to her procession, they’d started to follow up on that. She wasn’t like her husband, she was pleasantly unequal. You gave what you got, with Miss Persephone, and got no such leeway with Lord Hades. Once you bit it, you got the same as everyone else, regardless of your status or how good you were or how much you might’ve praised him in life.  
  


But it’s all besides the point; he can tell she ain’t happy now. And it’s a terrible epiphany as he puts it together, the way her lips are noncommittally turned down, the way she’s staring out but she ain’t got her eyebrows knit together or shot up or _anything_.  
  


Bored. That’s the word. That’s the horrible, gut wrenching word. She’s bored down here. Bored as she was on her mama’s island when she stuck herself onto Hades and asked him to take her away from it all, asked him to make her his wife. Now, she was bored of being the Lady of the Underground, watching the shades from their tiny house and surely tired of the darkness.   
  


Bored of the Underworld. Bored of _Hades_.   
  


He couldn’t tell what those long, drawn out silences were, once, but he could now. Could tell what those little sighs meant, and his heart _sinks_ . His gut aches; _why?_ Why hadn’t he been enough? She’d come crawling for him when they were young, had begged him to make her his wife once the time came and living with her mama had become too much to bear.   
  


One of the dogs sniffs at the hem of her dress, and Hades shoos him off, hooking his fingers beneath his collar and tuggin’ him away a little roughly when he doesn’t listen. They could surely feel it, too. Their mama’s desire to leave. Those dogs were tied to Persephone. They were loyal to her more than to him, gnashing teeth and open maws on the off chance they fought. Hades would have to lock them out back when they did, keep them from barking so damn loud that even the shades could hear the fight.   
  


“Leave ‘em, Hades.” She says, scratching behind Kerberos’ ears. Ever fucking contrarian, she was. “He’s just gonna miss me.” There was a time when her being contrarian riled Hades up in a different way, made the blood rush southward when she argued with him and he would sling her over his shoulder or push her down into the dirt and make her sing to his tune.  
  


“He ain’t the only one that does.” Hades growls, and he sees how Persephone’s face tightens into another one of her unreadable expressions.   
  


“Don’t be like that, Hades.” And she opens her mouth, like she might say something, but she never does. Hades picked up on that recently, too. And he wonders what went wrong. When she decided that she would drop her habit of saying just about every damn thought that passes through her head.   
  


Perhaps she’d just dropped it around _him_ and the fact that it’s a real possibility makes his stomach turn over.   
  


“What d’you mean, lover? Can’t say the truth anymore?” Did it make her stomach lurch with guilt, did it just remind her that she no longer wanted him, the man she’d promised herself to for eternity.  
  


“You know you don’t mean it like that, Hades.” She chides, and Hades can’t help how the anger bubbles in his chest at that, because she can read him so damn well and he still struggles to piece her together, still struggles to so much as understand her damn expressions and she’s reading into his words so damn easily. Surely that’s how she’d gotten bored of him. She understood each nook and cranny of him and knew what he would say to anything she said, and how their marriage had lost that youthful spark of handling her every which way as young men are prone to doing, because they were no longer young, and the unending cycle had lost its novelty.  
  


“Well, why don’t you tell me how I mean it, then?”   
  


“You’re really gonna pitch a fit now, Hades?” She snaps, snaps the way she does at the dogs when they shake the table while they eat or tackle her and make her drop her cigarette. Persephone did always have a habit of snapping things out before thinking, and now was no different.   
  


“Me tellin’ you that I’m gonna miss you is me pitchin’ a fit, I’ll be damned--”  
  


“Oh, you _know_ you don’t mean it like that. You mean it cus you’re pissed at me for whatever fuckin’ reason you want now--”  
  


“It’s not whatever fuckin’ reason, you care more that the _dog_ misses you than me!”   
  


“You know that ain’t true, since when are you jealous of the dog? What, you think I love the dog more than you, my _husband--_ ”   
  


“Clearly you ain’t happy here! Clearly you want to go back up top already, come on Persephone, don’t try to _lie to me--”  
  
_

Persephone’s mouth opens into that ‘I’m-thinking-something-but-I-ain’t-gonna-say’ shape, and her lip curls like she’s about to say something just as nasty, anyways, and the frown lines on her cheeks deepen. “You’re really gonna do this, like we ain’t got less than a month left together.” She hisses.  
  


“You know it’s true, that’s why you’re avoiding the question-- always avoiding the damn question, when are you gonna be up-front with me, Persephone?”   
  


“I ain’t avoiding it, it’s just _stupid,_ Hades, and you damn well know it.” Her face has scrunched up, and she’s got the same expression as she does when she finds weeds in her garden, and is _that_ what he was to her?   
  


“It’s not. You know it hasn’t, know that things have been different for the past few years, got this face on ya like when your mama used to call you back ho-”  
  


“Since you can clearly make a whole narrative in your own head about what I’m _clearly_ feelin’, clearly you don’t need to ask me about it, right, Hades?”  
  


“I’m so sick of it, of you dancin’ around the issue because you act like you ain’t grown enough to deal with it. Stop actin’ like you’re only a couple centuries old!”   
  


“I’m the one actin’ like I’m a coupl’a centuries old, like you ain’t the one making a big deal out of me being _quiet!_ ”  
  


“Because you’re never quiet, Persephone-- you never shut up for longer than two minutes, and yet--” Hades looks down, looks at Kerberos, who’s sitting at Persephone’s heels, who’s eying Hades up with somethin’ fierce on the brain and his teeth are bared, maw shut but with the lips pulled back into that threat of an expression. Hades swallows and just rubs at the bridge of his nose. “You’ve been quiet, past few years. Ain’t like you.”   
  


Persephone’s lips are pressed into a thin line, and she looks at him with that heavy, bleak look, because she got somethin’ to say and _won’t_ say it, then turns back out the window, into the darkness. “Don’t be stupid, Hades.” She says, thin fingers intertwining together in a strict way that ain’t like her.  
  


And Hades’ heart sinks. 

_II_

The train ride is slow, it chugs according to the command of its master. Its master, who is sitting beside his wife, and what a sight it is, with Persephone’s suitcase in between the two of them. A wall wedged straight between them, blocking Hades because of course they hadn’t managed to not fight in the few weeks left of winter.   
  


Of course Hades had snapped at her when she stepped on, wondering if she’d even miss him, lunging because she’d wounded him enough, wounded him by keeping him at an arm’s distance and he couldn’t figure out how to get her to _say_ what was wrong.   
  


Of course, he wouldn’t sacrifice his pride and show the wound, festering and painful and still bleeding, roll onto his back and let her decide what to do with him. She already had too much, had too much territory given over, willingly, no less. She had his tender, bleeding heart held tightly in her grasp, and she had found a way to entertain herself by digging her nails into it, by clawing her way through it and refusing to hear his pleas to _stop_.  
  


Not that she would care if he did. If he apologized, and begged her to explain, begged her to tell him what he had done wrong. He knew this song and dance, had seen it play out a million times over with her mama. He had seen it in how Demeter glared at him, at how her dark brown eyes narrowed and tightened each time Hades’ hand wrapped tight around Persephone’s. Had she _known_ that Persephone was bored? Had she _known_ at the end of each summer, and perhaps that was her vengeance. Letting them fall apart silently and uneventfully. Never warning, never doing a damned thing to stop it.  
  


Hand to the fucking Styx, he hated that woman so damn _much_ sometimes. Even if she’d made Persephone, the woman who made up the other half to their song.   
  


The woman who was testing his fucking patience, the woman who drove him mad in every possible way, that made him rave mad. Surely that was one of her divine abilities, too, it _had_ to be. The ability to tear a man from the inside out, to make him feel like he was going insane at the absence of her touch, to make him read into every breath and tilt of her head.   
  


Surely that’s what those pomegranate seeds had done to her. When she’d consumed them, she’d consumed a piece of him, a piece of his essence, something that gave her very whims so much control over Hades. Because she was worse than any poison crawling through his veins, her kisses dug into him worse than any knife or infection or whatever else that gave a man a slow death.  
  


Worst of women, she was. Worst upon worst of women, and he was a dog, foaming and raving mad, straining against the leash of their six months together and desperately trying to chase her, because that’s all he knew how to do and she was gaining speed and she was gaining an advantage because she was so far ahead of him, just out of his grasp even as he reached with all his might.  
  


And now he’s got the edge of her damned case digging into his ribs, through the black leather of his coat. Leather which is _genuine_ because she’d had it made just for him, had made it fit his exact frame, had taken his measurements by hand and playfully danced around the subject of _what_ his gift would be. She’d run her hands over the silk of his shirt, and her hands were _warm,_ warm with life and he’d felt that warmth even through the fabric. So really, it was her coat.  
  


Now she won’t touch him. Pressed against the wall, and if she could get away with doing so, she’d have her face smushed against the damn window.   
  


She’s never been like this, the ugly part of him croaks out, curling in the back of his mind. She’s never wanted to leave. They’ve never fought so furiously-- at least, not just before the train ride. No, it was a sanctimonious thing, their train ride. It was a sacrament they took, side by side for the first ten minutes, then ending up tightly wound together.   
  


Ending up with Persephone’s skirts pushed up, with Hades slotted between her legs in that holy communion, in that moment when Hades was only a man, who needed to be as physically close to her as possible. On the altar of her thighs, taking her as a eucharist, the body, the flesh.   
  


And now Persephone had replaced him with a fucking _suitcase_ over a petty argument. “Lover, I-”  
  


“Shut up.” She growls out, and it’s more grit than word.   
  


“Seph, you can’t just do this on the ride-”  
  


“ _I_ didn’t do anything. I told you I didn’t wanna fight, Hades. I told you I didn’t wanna get into anything in the last few weeks of winter. _You_ decided that you wanted to imply, what, that I didn’t love ya anymore, that I wasn’t gonna miss you?”   
  


Hades may not be a smart man. May not be good at reading women-- scratch that, good at reading _Persephone,_ but he _knows_ she’s deflecting, knows she’s avoiding the conversation because it’s ugly and uncomfortable and Persephone never liked ugly and uncomfortable. She liked to scurry off away from it, hide out from it ‘till it went away.   
  


“You’re _bored_ with me.” He says, a deep, horrible _wounded_ sound. Even he hears it, and he reaches out for her hand, and she shifts hers away. Quick and ugly, it moves from on her suitcase to her lap. Picking at the wound, makin' the blood start to flow.  
  


She doesn’t say anything. Not for a good, long while, letting Hades _stew_ in it. Making the wound fester. She’s doing it on _purpose. She knows what makes him burn up inside._ Knows better than anyone.  
  


“Ain’t true.” She says coldly.  
  


“That’s all you have to fuckin’ say, you have to be fuckin’ kidding me, Seph. Got me sittin’ here, and all you have is ‘ain’t true’.” He hisses, all rattlesnake and no longer a wounded dog. No, he’s angry now. “What is it, then, what’s not _good enough_ for you?”   
  


“You’re so full of _shit,_ Hades.” She snaps, “I ain’t bored of you, I just--”  
  


“Y’just _what_. What, the underworld ain’t all you cooked it up to be in your head?”   
  


“What the hell is your problem-”  
  


“Clearly, I ain’t the one with the problem--” And the train is still dragging on slowly, pulling into the station, and it’s only a few hundred meters away, and Persephone’s eyes are still on the fucking window, and why won’t she look at him-  
  


“You’re accusin’ me of a _lot_ of things, Hades, and I ain’t sure who the hell you think you’re talkin’ to.” She snaps, “I just missed the surface world, is that such a damn crime-”  
  


“It is when you keep brushin’ me _off._ ”  
  


And Persephone’s face twists, and she turns to him, full of indignation. “I don’t wanna talk about this.” She growls. “Couldn’t even let the train ride happen peacefully, couldn’t at least just be _quiet_ for it.”   
  


“Oh, and what was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to sit obediently, waitin’ for you to call me back like a dog in a cage?”  
  


“Fuck, _I dunno, Hades!”_ She hollers, the gravelly note hitting from the back of her throat. “Just stop this shit!” The sound echoes on the metal of the train, on the window.   
  


The last stretch is silent, and somehow, _somehow_ impossibly heavier than before. And Hades’ got her caged in, has got her still pressed against the window, and maybe, just maybe, when she stands to leave, she’ll give him a kiss. Just one, something to soothe his old, aching heart. Something to let him settle for a little bit, before he climbs back up to the earth to request more of her.  
  


She stands, and she squeezes from between him and her suitcase, her bottles of springtime and wine clanking around in it, and she looks at him, pulling her coat on. He can’t read her expression, but what’s new.   
  


She stares at him, an angry god before him, and he was her awaiting supplicant, hoping for her mercy, praying for salvation from her wrath. From her coldness. Persephone was _good_ at cold. A far sight better than Hades was.   
  


“Seph.” He murmurs, voice hoarse. And he doesn’t know what would come after that. _Please?_ Hades may not have much pride left in him, when it came to his wife, but he doesn’t beg, doesn’t self flagellate. But now he wants to. Needs to, just to get an answer, get closure before the winter ends for the year.  
  


She stretches her jaw, as if still figuring out what she’s going to do. If she’s gonna leave him like that, waiting on her.  
  


But she doesn’t, leans down and cups his jaw, her nails press into his skin, because she's still mad, of course and she kisses his cheek, and Hades’ chest burns up with just how _easy_ it was for her. How hard was it, really, for her to just reassure him like that? To kiss him, to put her hands on his shoulders, to remind him that she loved him. It was hard enough, hard enough to spend half the year with his wife on the surface, in the arms of her procession and the rest of the surface world.   
  


Hades could admit he was a jealous man, could admit he wasn’t the best among men, but surely it wasn’t that hard.   
  


He pulls on his leather coat, pulls his sunglasses from his breast pocket. He clicks them open, and sets them on his nose. Because he has the damned habit of watching Persephone and her procession go, of staying in the sun even if it burned his eyes, of watching her leave him for good. Watched her dance until she was fully gone from his sight.  
  


Hades wasn’t a smart man. Not when it came to her, leastways, and she was a knife stuck in his chest, embedded there for good, and the blade is serrated. Tiny blades upon blades, and Hades was a fool who willingly twisted the blade in his chest, dug it deeper into his flesh.   
  


He stands at the doorway, and she stands beside him. She cheers something, loud and delighted as she steps down, and he’s watching her and damn him, he doesn’t _want_ her to go, and since when does Hades bend to the needs of petty mortals, since when does he give away his desires for short lived creatures who are doomed to enter his kingdom anyways?  
  


His arm reaches out just as she’s about to take the final step, and he takes he takes her by the wrist, and her head snaps back to face him, confused and angry as his grip tightens, and he yanks her back, not hard as he can, but certainly with a firmness to it. No harder than he’d ever pulled her around in other circumstances-- better circumstances, where she’d wanted him to pull her back. She stumbles, stumbles _hard_ because she’s a skinny thing, bony and lean, and Hades looms over her, a mountain of a man beside his wife. And he knows that, knew it when he pulled her back, that she would be forced to pause, forced to stop _leaving him.  
  
_

“Seph.” He croaks again, as if that explains it all. “Please, you ain’t gotta leave like this. You could stay a couple more days.” He whispers it, because he ain’t about to let her procession hear, even as the music winds down and the clearing turns into a terrible, nervous silence because Hades wasn’t supposed to _do that._ No, he was supposed to let her go. To watch her send off. He never took her back, never grabbed her.   
  


“Let me make it right for a couple of days.”   
  


Persephone’s face tightens, but this ain’t like earlier, indignant. Angry, sure, but she’s not yet pulled away, and her face is more confused, more disbelieving. Her mouth opens like she might say something cruel, and she does.   
  


“No.” She says it, hard, firm. No, she ain’t arguing, but it’s got an argument behind it. _The hell has gotten into you?_   
  


And she pulls her wrist out of his grip, and he wonders what would happen if he just held fast, because it’s not like Hermes or her cult would be pressed to do much of anything about it.   
  


But he doesn’t. He loosens up a little, lets her hand slip on through, and she yanks _hard,_ expecting a struggle in it. Surprised when there is none. Mad, but still pleasantly surprised. 

  
See, he can still throw her for a loop. Did it just now, did it twice.   
  


Hades watches her step down, watches her procession nervously play, eyes still flicking up to him but never staring for longer than is safe. And he sees Hermes, in the corner of his eye, with his arm interlaced with Persephone’s, staring him down with an expression that could be blank, could be noncommittal, but somethin’ about it just ain’t right. Got something heavy, something judgemental in it.  
  


It doesn’t matter. God of vagrants and thieves don’t mean much in the face of Death; Hades only respected his fellow deities as just that, his fellows. He watches as they turn, as the procession moves, jazzy and fast paced and something joyful, as if trying to cleanse the area of what just happened.   
  


Hades watches as the last of her coat, no, _his_ coat, because it had been a gift after she’d made his leather coat. A gift he’d commissioned uptop for because you can’t make a coat out of coal and rock, now can you, and he’d made it for her. It was his damn coat, and he was watching her leave with it, leave with his heart in her fist, digging her nails into it and playing with it to see what made it hurt most; with no way of escaping the torture of each spring and summer. Of waiting for her, now, coupled with the fact that she was growing bored with him. And his chest itches with the thought.   
  


The door closes as the last sounds of her procession fade away. Staying longer than usual.

_III_

The train doors shut, and he isn’t sure what to do with himself anymore.  
  


The train car rolls, and he pulls the shades off. Folds them neatly, and sets them into his breast pocket, and watches the surface as the train moves, slow and loud and chugging.   
  


He’s at a loss.

_IV_

The sound of picks and hammers and screws and brick being laid upon brick upon brick upon brick. It had taken some convincing, getting the shades to animate into this sort of monotony, working in perfect sync. Each movement, each clank, each thud of the hammer, each gem and metal pulled from the earth, all in perfect unison.   
  


Putting into motion what Hades could not do alone. Or rather, putting into motion what he laid out. The print for a foundry, for the power grid, to bring his wife the heat and the light of the sun while down below. Rather than the cold and dark, rather than the blandness of what had surely bored her. Bring her close, entice her back into his arms.  
  


The shades all knew their instructions. They worked in single file, and they each obeyed their god-king, because Hades held all the cards. They’d known that since the moment they stepped foot in the underground, known that since they were even up on the world above, that when they descended into that final step, Hades would own them.  
  


And own them he did. He kept their souls in neat, orderly writing. Had them sign their names, right on that neat little line, that Lord Hades always managed to keep straight, every time he wrote their contracts before them, that they were a subject to Hades, that he was their god for the rest of eternity and beyond.   
  


Hades, king of the beyond, and a fool-hearted man, in desperate search of his wife’s heart, because since when had he lost it?   
  


And this would bring her back to him, a testament to his love, a testament to his adoration of her. Wasn’t that what she needed to see?   
  


She drove him mad, his woman, drove him _wild,_ drove him _rabid_ _._ Drove him to all extremes a man could, despite it going against his very nature, because he loved her, and he wanted her to love him back, wanted to know that she felt the same, even after all these years, years they’d lost track of long ago. And there was a time when there was a point of pride in that.   
  


_“How long have we been married?” And you could hear her smile in the question. And what a fool Hades had been to believe it would last.  
  
_

_“Since the world began."  
  
_

Now there was none of that. Only silences. Long, ugly silences, that stretched out further and further with each passing winter.   
  


And he stands on the catwalk, watching as the dim street lamps illuminate the dark rock of the underground. Watching the shades move and work and labor. Some of them move under it better than others. Ain’t used to the hard labor, were never accustomed to it in life. They’d learn soon enough, though. Build the muscle, build the strength to keep moving.  
  


And he could see her. See her eyes widening in surprise, and she’d be impressed, wouldn’t she? Would see how much he’s willing to do for her. Illuminate the entire underground, put the shades to do more than just mill about. That’s what she needs, needs to see that he can change, that he can still dazzle her just the same. There’s more than rocks and cold and dark here, she'd see. Hades could do _more._ His letters simply couldn't capture the grandeur of their home, refurbished and made new once more.

_V_

The train no longer moves to its master’s heel. It moves on his instructions, sure, but Hades was no longer conducting, no longer providing the fuel, no longer doing the work himself.   
  


No need to.  
  


Besides, the shades will appreciate the purpose, will appreciate having purpose, appreciate having something more to do than stumble about. Give them purpose, give them food. A reason to feel even half alive. Jobs, work, that was an undeniable part of the surface world, too. Hades sheltered them, cared for them. He was their king, and he never forgot that duty.   
  


He taps his pen on the table, and wonders what Persephone will say when she sees them. When she sees how much has changed in the pursuit of pleasing her.  
  


The train is reaching the station, and he sees her outline, still in _his_ damn coat, even if everyone called it hers, it's _his._ Bought as a gift to her, because Hades had a knack for gifts, and surely that’s a testament to somethin’. Maybe it’s just how quickly she forgives, or how much she likes the coat.  
  


Hades pulls on his own coat, and he checks the time as he steps to the doorway.  
  


Not a moment too late.  
  


Persephone’s face is unreadable.   
  


Hades smiles, though it seems more like he’s baring his teeth. Persephone always commented on that. _“Just got a mean mug by nature. Think it’s cus you’re such a sonuvabitch.”  
  
_

“Afternoon, lover.” And it’s a rumbling, deep noise. Just as menacing as his smile.  
  


And Persephone hikes up her case into her arms. “Afternoon.” And her face changes into a _we need to talk.  
  
_

Hades’ hand reaches out, and she takes it. She _always_ takes it. Squeezes on tight as she hoists herself up the steps, and she watches her procession continue to celebrate. Their matron has died for the year, a dead bride for her dead husband, and they’re blasting their trumpets with delight, because Persephone denied Death every year. She would leave and come back, come to and leave Hades’ kingdom each year.   
  


She denied _Hades_ every year. She’d come to and leave _Hades_ every year.  
  


She closes her eyes as she watches the door slide shut. 


	2. Honey, make this easy

I

Something about the boy has endeared her.

He’s toddling about, right now, with his little hands feeling just about every new fruit in Persephone’s garden. Hermes’ trailing after him, and Orpheus’ pudgy little hand is gripping onto his for dear life as he stumbles through the garden.  
  


Now, Hermes ain’t the sort to trail after a toddler, and Persephone ain’t the sort to be inclined to _watch_ him do so.   
  


Ain’t the parenting sort, neither of ‘em. But Calliope, flakey muse that she was, had pleaded somethin’ _fierce_ to Hermes, had asked him to take care of her little boy, that she couldn’t keep him up on the mountain. And so, Hermes was now stuck with a toddler who looked just about _nothin’_ like him, and who hadn’t even spoken a damn word yet.  
  


_“So, what’s wrong with him?” Hermes had asked. “Why ain’t he talkin’?”  
  
_

_“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with him.” Calliope replied. “Just gotta wait a little longer for him to talk, but he will.” She’d said, sure as anything, as she pet his hair, like he was a beloved pet cat that she had to give away, rather than her son. “He sings, though. Not too much, but he does. You just let him hum away, and you’ll see, Hermes. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with him.”  
  
_

Well, the boy _did_ sing, so, point to Calliope, she hadn’t pulled a fast one on either of ‘em, which was the smart thing to do, because neither Hermes nor Persephone appreciated being lied to.  
  


He sang mighty well, too. Although he didn’t quite have _words_ all figured out yet, just hummed. But it didn’t matter either way, he understood words well enough, understood when you called him over and told him no and he followed directions, and so Persephone hadn’t been too bothered at the idea of the two of them visiting her and her mama’s gardens. She was supposed to be here anyways, since her ma insisted that she spend the week, at least.  
  


_“Been leading your procession halfway ‘cross the country these past few summers, don’t think it would kill you to visit your mama instead of playing vagrant with Hermes.”  
  
_

_“Thought it would do some good to spend more time with my followers.”  
  
_

_“Your cult, ya mean.”  
  
_

_“I like to call them my procession.”  
  
_

_“Don’t matter what name you slap on it, baby, a cult is a cult.”  
  
_

_“You know, in recent years, you’ve been sounding more and more like my man-”  
  
_

_“Your man sounds more like me, don’t get that twisted. I’m far older than your man is. I was walkin’ this earth long before his daddy decided he wanted to chuck him down into the earth.”  
  
_

Persephone sits in her mama’s rocking chair, and watches the boy stumble into her cabbage. She’ll have to fix the damage later, but she don’t mind it much. Just observes Hermes and the boy. Watches Hermes pick him out of the cabbage and tut him in a way that could only be described as downright _parental._ And perhaps Hermes had insisted that he hadn’t picked up Orpheus out of kindness, but ‘cus him and Calliope are friends, but Persephone knew better than to take his words at face value. Weren’t a bastard demigod to Hermes’ name, and that had been no accident, but Persephone wasn’t stupid enough to be blind to the fact that Hermes liked the kid.   
  


Well, he might not speak, but at least he has moxy. Don’t cry much, and hums to pass the time.   
  


Perhaps it’s impolite to watch them. To indulge in such a scene. But she had not seen a good one in the past six months, and she will allow herself some damn selfishness.  
  


She deserved a happy sight, to be allowed not to think of the man downstairs, begging on her attention.

II

Hades’ letters are fewer and farther between. She doesn't know why it scares her, but every day that passes without Hermes at the very least coming in with a letter and shaking his head, well, it made a woman antsy, didn’t it. Her having no idea what he was up to.  
  


His heavy, neat strokes have all but turned to chicken scratch, and his writing sounds less lovesick and more _madman_ with each coming letter.   
  


Hermes does not say anything when he brings the letters, nothing beyond sucking in his teeth in that way that everyone raised down on Earth does; familial habit, of sorts. No jokes about how the old man is truly missin’ her. No jokes about how the Underworld misses its mama; even that is too far.  
  


No, Hermes looks _grim_ when he brings her correspondence.  
  


And Persephone does not have the heart to ask him what it is, why he looks the way he does. What Hades means by the foundry, what he means by the start of an electrical grid for her. To keep her warm through the winter, since his arms had not sufficed, whatever the fuck that meant. He’d started to all but speak in tongues a few weeks ago, pleased with the progress he’s made in such short time.  
  


The factories were due to be completed by this time next year. What they were for, he did not say, he’d only elaborated that it is for the purpose of pleasing her. That she would no longer be bored in his underground. It would no longer be dark and boring, as she had found it.   
  


She and Hermes sit side by side, on the rocking chairs on her ma’s porch. Her _week long visit, only a week, promise you,_ had extended to two. Not that she hadn’t seen it coming a mile away, but she couldn’t begrudge her mama too much on wanting to see her, to have her back over. And her procession would do just fine if they missed her for a couple of weeks. Would still be receiving the fruits of her season and a little extra for their dedication. Perhaps they’d miss a little celebrating and a little more wine from that celebrating, but they were hardly in need.   
  


And well, Demeter was in need. Both of them could feel something boiling beneath the surface. Of both each other and Missus Gaia herself. Someone picking at the treasures beneath her skin, toiling inside her organs and taking the nutrients from _inside her.  
  
_

Demeter always asked how Hades was when the letters came, and when Persephone said fine, she made it clear that she did not believe her, but did not press, either. Persephone did not know what to make of that. Mama did not ever respect her privacy, even in the worst of times-- and surely, it meant something was _deeply_ wrong if her Ma was not poking and prodding at the most intimate details of their marriage, while Persephone carefully batted away her questions.  
  


Hermes’ boy-- his name is Orpheus, Hermes’ boy, is in the kitchen, ‘helping’ her ma bake her apple cake, and the two of them are sitting outside,   
  


“Brother.” She calls out, and her voice is hoarse. She’s never been good at this sort of thing. “What’s goin’ on down there?” She says, and she is frightened to know the answer. Wondering what Hades is _doing._ “Has my man finally gone crazy?” She says it with all the ache in the world. That perhaps his father’s legacy wasn’t as far away as it was when they were young and naive and terribly; _terribly_ in love.  
  


Hermes shakes his head, “Oh, no, sister, your man ain’t gone mad yet.” He says, “He knows _exactly_ what he’s doing, Mister Hades.” He says, and crosses his leg over the other, fingers intertwining. “Looks like one of them mortal cities, down there.” He says, “And he got electricity down there, now.” He says, “The old man’s started putting the shades to work, sister. Got ‘em all single file, got ‘em all building his little pet projects.”  
  


Persephone swallows. “He truly got ‘em workin’ on a wall, brother?”  
  


“Not just _any_ wall, sister. _The_ wall.”  
  


“You say that like I’m supposed to understand what the _fresh hell_ that means.” She grunts, and perhaps she takes a swig from her flask, but it doesn’t matter because Hermes does not snitch and Persephone does not tell. She hadn’t told her ma yet, and she was planning on keeping her self-prescribed medication a secret for as long as she could.   
  


Hermes sighs, and slides a cigarette from his sleeve, handing it to her. Self rolled-- not like that pre-rolled shit that them mortals had taken to, with nasty filters. Or like those great, stinking cigars that her husband _loved_ because they made him feel big and powerful and all sorts of wealthy even if she hated the stench of it, even with their windows open.  
  


Persephone takes the cig, and she does not thank him, but he doesn’t ask for gratitude, neither. They owed each other so many favors for so long, that to try and keep track, or even to acknowledge the minute ones-- such as this one-- was on the same level as sorting sand.   
  


“A pointless wall, sister. Ain’t no end. It’s set to _never_ be completed, you understand?” He says, and takes out one of his cigarettes, and he pulls a lighter from one of his _innumerable_ coat pockets, and Persephone holds out hers only once he finishes lighting his own. Etiquette, you know. Persephone wasn’t raised in a barn.   
  


Well, not _entirely_ . She can make out the barn right on the horizon line.  
  


“So he’s not goin’ crazy, but he’s goin’ on, makin’ pointless walls.” She says disbelievingly, pulling her cig from her lips. Surely Hermes didn’t think she was _that_ stupid.   
  


“No, sister, you ain’t gettin’ it.” He explains, “The _point_ is for it to be unending. For the shades to just keep on keepin’ on, to give them somethin’ to do once the factories and the grid and the rest of it is all set up.” Hermes snorts, “Your man ain’t goin’ crazy, sister. He’s building himself a little empire.” He says, “And he expects you to repay him in kind when he’s done setting it up. A damn peacock, is your man, and he thinks he’s gone and made you the finest nest in all three estates.”   
  


“Is it?” A tentative hope it might be alright after all.  
  


“Hell no, girl.” Hermes says, as if _she’s_ the mad one. “Ain’t nothing _fine_ about what he’s doing.”  
  


Persephone takes another sip from her flask. She’s trying to be controlled about this thing, this ugly _habit_ she’s been picking up this summer, and the last, and the one before that. She’s not about to wander into her mama’s living room drunk off her own supply.  
  


“Been gettin’ heavy handed with the flask.” Hermes points out. As if that is somehow relevant to all of this, as if her drinking is somehow the cause of all this rather than the effect, as if Hades is _right,_ that she’s no better than the drunkards who stumble into Hermes’ bar--  
  


Hermes puts a hand on her shoulder. Bony hands, his hands. Both of them, skinny by nature. Lanky things, and right now, Persephone did not want to be comforted by a skinny thing. She wanted to bury herself in the warmth of her medicine, the warmth of her man, broad and strong beneath the softness’ and she wanted her beloved man to stop giving her a sense of _dread_ with each time he so much as sent an update from downstairs.   
  


“What’s it matter to you, brother.” She grouses, and Hermes takes her wrist before she can take another spiteful drag.   
  


“You got all year to drink yourself stupid, sister. Just take two weeks off. Takin’ the edge off everything won’t do you any good. Even you know that.”  
  


Persephone opens her mouth, and her mama calls the two of them back into the house to see her and Orpheus’ cake.

III

Her procession dances around her in the dying heat of the late summer.  
  


Hermes and Orpheus are back on the Eastern side of the country, and correspondence from her husband is terrifyingly spotty.  
  


Perhaps that part is her fault. She hadn’t answered any of his previous letters. Too many things that she could not and would not touch.  
  


_I understand that you have gotten bored with the underground, but I am fixing her for you.  
  
_

_I miss you so, lover. Six months out of the year simply is not enough for us.  
  
_

_If only you could have stayed a little longer, lover, you could’ve seen my blueprints before you left.  
  
_

_You never stay overlong anymore.  
  
_

_Why won’t you stay with me?  
  
_

_When did I stop being enough?  
  
_

The music is blaring, and she swears she could go deaf on it alone. She wishes they’d be quiet, but that’s on account of her being so damn drunk that her vision is swimming a little. Frankly, everything is swimming a little. She sways on her feet, and she has to lean back on the strong oak in the center of the clearing, so that she doesn’t fall over. The _Dadouchousa_ is flirting with one of the _Panageis,_ and Persephone can see her flushing, though she cannot tell if it’s from the wine or from the offer to kiss.   
  


She remembers when she was that young. Shy at the thought of being _kissed._ When had she grown so old and jagged?  
  


One of the _Dadouchos_ from this particular sect sits beside her. He’s new. Just as new as this _Hierophantos,_ who’s father has just died. Just this past month.  
  


Persephone wonders if he will join her husband’s little assembly line when his judgement passed, as Hermes had told her he was building.  
  


She hopes not. She rather liked Abercius before his passing. He was a good _Hierophantos,_ never brought in too many new members, and never asked too many questions. He understood Persephone when she said she didn’t want to end up like Dionysus and his cult. Seems that his son had taken that habit as well, but he might also just be nervous around her; he’d only been the _Hierophantos_ for three weeks. She did not begrudge his hesitancy to talk to her; after all, surely his questions revolved around her husband and his underground. Namely, about his father, and surely he knew Persephone would not answer that so soon, in fact, _could not_ answer that so soon. She had divulged the exacts of the Underground with few _Hierophantos,_ and those had been the ones who had received her and her mother’s sacred objects in the first place.   
  


“Say, my Lady, how does the sect please you?” Her _Dadouchos_ asks, as if it is a smart question. Persephone takes a sip of her wine, and she looks at him, sizing him up. He leans away, but he does not move.  
  


“I like it plenty.” She says. “It’s small.”   
  


“And you prefer your followings small?”   
  


“Most times.”   
  


“Why’s that?”  
  


“For reasons far above the curiosities of a _Dadouchos._ ” She says, but she passes a bottle of her wine, and he does not hesitate to take it. He is bold, and Persephone likes that. He is bold in a way that doesn’t go against her desires, but flows with them. And it would be easy for her to ask for him to follow her into the woods, out of their clearing, and into the shrubbery; a last hurrah for their goddess of new and verdant life. Even if she wouldn’t enjoy it for a second, even if she’d think of her madman downstairs, even if she’d shut her eyes and hope to god the man didn’t speak for too long.   
  


Wouldn’t that spite the old bastard down below. Had grumbled about how she surely had other options, and because he was _stuck_ down there, he had no way of knowing if she was taking those other options or not. 

But the idea is stupid, because the _Dadouchos_ is a young man, and Persephone has never cared much for young men who flit about from girl to girl. And even if she did, all she would be thinking of would be how she’s really spitting her bull-stubborn old husband.   
  


Styx, the both of them are old, now. Almost as old as this world. Older than anyone here, older than the souls in Elysium, even. Younger than a couple souls down in Tartaros, sure, but that was a different ballpark altogether.  
  


“What’s your name, _Dadouchos?"  
  
_

“Ciaran, my Lady.” He says, after a non-negligible swig of _her_ wine.   
  


He passes back her wine, and they both stare at the bonfire for a long while, neither of them speaking. It is uncomfortable, but it is better to be in uneasy silence with somebody beside you, than to be quiet on your lonesome.   
  


“Is your man is comin’ to pick you up soon?” He asks and he’s got an accent that don’t belong to the Northern half of the country. Has a distinct twang, compared to the rest of this particular procession of hers, and Persephone shakes her head.   
  


“Not for another couple weeks, Ciaran.” She says, rolling the name off her tongue with more uncertainty than she likes. He’s new.   
  


He snorts, “Then why are you down here with us?”   
  


“I’m always down here with my followers. Visit a different sect whenever I can.” She says, “You new?”   
  


“I am indeed, my lady.”   
  


“Well, maybe you should ask the nice girls who are gigglin’ over you to help you before you ask me.” Persephone knew a thing or two about not letting people know of your own uncertainty. First time she stepped foot in the Underworld, she was about as nervous as a dog being dragged outside in a storm.  
  


But Ciaran wasn't nervous. There was a charming boldness to asking your deity just _why_ they were here, as if they didn’t have every right on earth to go wherever they pleased.  
  


Persephone takes a final sip of her wine, and she sets it down in front of Ciaran, who takes his own helping. Ain’t so bad, a kindred spirit who’d share booze, and wasn’t too afraid to ask questions. Even if they were stupid questions.   
  


Persephone reaches out a hand, and Ciaran takes it. Stupid as his questions were, Persephone didn't want to be answerin' questions. Least of all, any about her man.

In the meantime, she can take both their minds off her man by dancin'. And Ciaran does seem to like this turn of events, if the cocksure grin on his face is anything to go by. Trusting her intentions, trusting his matron to do right by him. And Persephone is _trying_ , by all the Gods above she is trying to do good by her procession, so that she doesn’t have to think about how she is failing her shades. Is trying to be a deity worth worshipping, in spite of her man, and in spite of his correspondence.  
  


In spite of what awaited her down below.  
  


Ciaran has working hands, but slender. Ain’t like her man’s, or like Hermes’. Calloused, but strong. He holds tight when she pulls him up.  
  


“Come on, dance with me, Ciaran. No point in sitting around during a party.” 

IV

They sit opposite from one another, now. Persephone had refused his attempt at sitting beside her, and had set her luggage on the seat length-wise. Quite unsubtly telling him to _git._ To be gone. Like she does when she punishes the dogs for digging in her garden. Sets them in one of the guest rooms and leaves them there to think about what they’ve done.  
  


Hades always did like to compare himself to some poor, whimpering hound whenever Persephone’s ire turned on him.  
  


“You just gonna sit there and glare at me for the whole ride, lover?”  
  


“Well since you’re giving me _ideas_ .” She drawls, and he rolls his eyes, still upset that she didn’t bound up into his arms, didn’t let him scoop her up into his big ole train, which Hermes often teased _had_ to be overcompensating for something. Wanted to sweep her up into his arms, like the first time he pulled her into his chariot, wide-eyed and _pleased_ at the sight of her ride to her new home.  
  


Failing that response, he decided he’d hem and haw all the way down home. After all, hadn’t he shown her his devotion in his ramblings of _Hadestown_ and how _it would be different from the fields, it would no longer be dark, lover.  
  
_

“I don’t get why you’re upset. I ain’t done anythin’ to cause this--”  
  


“Oh, you haven’t? Then surely I imagined all that you sent me all those letters, raving on like some sort of madman. Of course, how silly of me. Let me apologize, since I’m clearly the crazy one here.” She hisses, though it’s not yet reached venomous territory.  
  


Two dogs snapping at each other, circling each other. No teeth in the flesh, not yet.  
  


“I don’t see your point.”   
  


“You don’t?”  
  


“I’m making the city _for you,_ damn it! I made it clear in my letters--”  
  


“Your _letters don’t make a lick of sense, Hades._ ”   
  


“You probably just skimmed them. Didn’t even bother to read ‘em. It would make sense, since you didn’t respond. You think I ain’t good enough for you anymore. Ain’t up to your _tastes._ ”  
  


“You’ve got some damn nerve, Hades. I read your letters end to fuckin’ end--”  
  


“And yet you don’t _reply._ ” He points out, knowing that she it is undeniable, and that she cannot defend that. Yet she tries.   
  


“Am I supposed to come when you call, Hades? Last I remembered, I ain’t one of the dogs--”   
  


“But it wouldn’t kill you to at least _respond._ Three months, the whole summer, and not a damn peep out of you, lover. Not a damn word. And I kept on, kept writing to you, because I am _wholly_ devoted to us, to _you_ , while all _you_ care about is your goddamned _cult_ and your flask-- what, you think I ain’t noticed that you pull it out of your dress? You think I ignore you the way you ignore--”  
  


Persephone sharply snaps her gaze down, avoiding this conversation entirely because her medicine was not somethin’ she wanted to be thinkin’ about, at present. “So, I’m the bad guy ‘cus I didn’t indulge your mad writings. Of course, of course. How could I be so stupid.” She huffs. Stuffs her flask a little further into her dress, so that he can’t spot it flash in the light and be proven right about her habit.  
  


A long moment passes, one where the two of them avoid each other’s gazes, before he reaches out a hand to her. A big, cracked hand. Calloused hands, for parting stone and finding the geode inside. He’d been working in the mines, sure as anything. The cracks only came when he spent too much time in there.  
  


He was looking at Persephone like she was a particularly _stubborn_ geode.  
  


“Seph, _please,_ I’m tryin’ to fix us. All I want is to make you happy again.”   
  


Persephone looks at him. A dour old man, who’s just trying to get his wife back, trying so damn hard. She sees it in the labor lines of his hands. Sees it in the way his shoulders sag as he reaches out to her. Bares his soul and cuts at his own pride. Because Hades does not beg. Least, not to anyone but his wife. Hades had a pride that rivalled hers and Persephone had never begged for anything, and if he was begging, twice now, surely, _surely_ he was desperate. Desperate like a starving man begs for food. He lived and died on Persephone’s word. He swallows, voice hitting that desperate pitch, because he doesn’t know how to reach her. “ _Persephone._ ” And it’s the first time he’s said her name whole like that, the first time in a _while._   
  


Persephone takes his calloused hand, because how else can she fix this? Talk him from the edge of this? “Ain’t nothin’ to fix, lover. Just things gettin’ slow. We’re gettin’ old.” Which was true. Even he couldn’t deny that.  
  


But Hades doesn’t seem to like that response, no, not at all. He don’t seem to like most of her responses, nowadays.  
  


“Things ain’t never gotten _slow_ on my end.” He drawls, a slow, disappointed sound. Deep as hell, his voice was, and it sunk into her gut, making her uncomfortable. And that was the point, wasn’t it? To make her feel guilty, to make her feel _less than_ for not being all adoring. For daring to have room in her heart for things other than him. Always afraid that she somehow loved her flock more than him, always afraid that she would decide to leave him for a summertime lover who’d never bring her back down to the underworld.  
  


Certain that one day she’d leave his sorry ass, and there wouldn’t be a being on the whole of Gaia that would feel even a modicum of pity for him. Eternally stern, eternally unyielding bastard god-king Hades.   
  


“Can’t always be like you.” She mutters, and kicks up her feet onto the table, because she knows it bothers him. Takes her flask from her bra, and he doesn’t like the new habit, but she’d rather taken to it in recent years. Found that she enjoyed the way it softened the edges of all the ugly bits of the world, the way it sanded down all the unpleasant parts of their marriage. And it did its job _well._ Better than the morphine did; but the morphine was for especially bad occasions anyways. For the nights where Hades wouldn’t be around to see her anyhow, so she felt a little less guilty when she shot up, because she knew he wouldn’t know about it anyways.  
  


She hopes.  
  


“Just had this place cleaned.” He grumbles in return, and Persephone takes that bit of a weak point, that little nugget of irritation, and she rubs the grime and mud on the soles of her boots onto the table. Just to spite the old bastard.

V

The first time she sees Hadestown, she thinks her heart stops.  
  


It’s hot. Unbearably hot. Hot in the way that it feels your very flesh will melt off if you stand where you are. The heat is suffocating, all consuming in a way that she has never felt. Even her summers up-top were never quite so bright-hot. The sun couldn’t compare to Hades’ manufactured, cold fluorescence.  
  


She does not ask him why he’s created this, why he’s made such a _mess_ of their home. Destroying the peaceful sort of order that Hades once delighted in.  
  


Said that a quiet kingdom was the best sort. No fuss, no mess. All the more time to spend with her.   
  


Well, then came the lawyers, and then Hades started spendin’ his days in his study, according to Hermes.  
  


At least, when she wasn’t there to see it herself. At least, when she was around, he’d make the effort and bring his paperwork into the bedroom, settle himself against her and purr while she pet his hair, all while reading contracts and articles and ancient texts, and perhaps something in her had _unsettled_ when she saw them.  
  


Ancient texts on ruling the estates. On the rules Gaia had set in place.  
  


Sure, Persephone had been distant the past couple years, a bit absent minded, a little out of it-- but Hades was _somethin’ else entirely.  
  
_

And then when she sent letters the past couple summers, Hermes would spend hours in the underground and mutter somethin’ about how he was in a meeting with the Erinyes.  
  


Slow, slow buildup. Hades did always go about things the slow way. Didn’t like to rush into any ideas. Didn’t even rush into their marriage.  
  


And Persephone had let him. She’d let him set up the whole damn thing while caught up in the push and pull of their marriage and the peace with an uncomfortable undercurrent that they both understood and yet understood that they were under no circumstances to actually _speak about it.  
  
_

She takes a step back, and her back hits his chest. A brick wall, her man. Warm, all encompassing.   
  


He does not look down to meet her eyes. Only watches the beginnings of his creation.   
  


“Hades.” She whispers, horrified and soft.  
  


He doesn’t respond, simply brushing her shoulder, down her arm. There is no shame on his face. No embarrassment, nothing even approximating neutrality. Oh, it's all glee on his face.  
  


She makes eye contact with a shade, and she feels her gut tighten with _something_ when she does. When she meets those blank eyes. Lifeless in an entirely new way. In an entirely terrifying way. When they meet hers, they hold no joy, none of the appraisal that usually came when their beloved Lady’s return. No call that _the Missus is back, everyone!_ They don’t even hold the _slightest_ bit of recognition, she realizes.  
  


“ _Hades.”_ She says, louder this time, and she covers her mouth as she spots the rest of shades. Oh, the first one was just an appetizer, wasn’t he? The introduction to what her husband had done to his subjects.  
  


A perfect little single file line, shoveling coal and transporting the brick and mortar, and the wall was already _started._ Enough layers to worry her.  
  


“It’s alive, ain’t it lover.” He says, the way only a madman could think. “Just how you wanted it.” As if he has finally understood everything. As if he has fixed it all.  
  


As if he’s done a good job, and is waiting for the appropriate praise.  
  


She grips his arm, and feels like she may be sick when she sees the foundry begin to pour. Bright and somehow making Hadestown impossibly hotter; what an abjectly, horrifically _accurate_ name. The burning feels like it may singe the ends of her curls, the ends of that fine fur coat he insisted on buying her. The world around her seems to melt, seems to turn that sick orange, burning sort of color, staining everything around her. She shuts her eyes to avoid the glare, and yet it seems to penetrate even that. Burning, against all logic, brighter than the sun. No where to turn to that could free you of the brightness.  
  
This was all Hades, in every possible way. All his scheming and all his talents rolled up into one efficient little plot to win her back. To regain her affection.   
  


_“What have you done?”  
  
_

She reaches into her dress, and they both know she’s fishing for the flask.  
  


Hades pulls her away from the sight before she has the chance to reach the metal buried in her dress, not bothering to answer such an uncomfortable question. His displeasure at her horror is evident from the disgruntled look on his face, the way he grunts to himself, the way he holds her hand and yanks her away from his creation.  
  


They make it home, just barely. The sight of Hades’ new shantytown is covered by the cypress and the pomegranate orchard that surrounds their property. A gate around their home.  
  


She heaves for breath, sparing one last glance outside their door.   
  


Hades looks down at her, and folds his glasses. Sighs to himself, and shakes his head, as if disappointed in _her.  
  
_

She cannot bring herself from the door, staring out, watching out beyond the jagged line of trees. Waiting for smoke or fire to pass the height.  
  


Or maybe waiting for the foundry to light up their realm again. Waiting for everything to be bathed in orange and heat and for the world around her to curl in a way that makes her head spin, to make her feel sick again. She knows it will happen again. Knows it will bathe their home in that warmth, and she will see it, regardless of whether she feels it, and she wonders when it was installed. Wonders just what it’s for.   
  


What was he going to _do_ with all of this? All this set-up, it had to be for _something.  
  
_

Maybe that’s what unsettles her more. Knowing it won’t stop at this, that it’ll only get worse-- how can it possibly--  
  


Hades brushes her shoulder, and presses a glass into her hand. Her head snaps to meet his, and he looks on out their front door, sighing softly and refusing to meet her eyes.  
  


She takes a sip, and leans into him.  
  


Hoping that it will somehow be enough.  
  


He wraps his arm around her waist, and sighs, leaning in to kiss her temple. It is a welcome home. A quiet one, after the first one failed miserably. Even he can see that.  
  


Maybe it will be enough to pull him from the edge.

  
  


VI

His hands are on her hips. Big hands, Hades has, and they’re digging into her sides like he might be able to sink them into the flesh, hook her there the way a fish hook jabs into the roof of its mouth. She hooks her nails into his back, hooking him, too. That’s what it’s become, their time together when they ain’t fighting. Either they’re playin’ dominoes on the terrace or pulling each other’s clothes off.  
  


Persephone used to hate dominoes. She would watch from behind her ma’s shoulders as she and the Horae or some nymphs played round after round, and whenever she would ask for a turn, her mama would wave her hand and say it’s for grown folks, she better run off and play with the other kids.  
  


Persephone was _the oldest, mind,_ but that didn’t matter a bit to her mama.   
  


Hades taught her to appreciate it, though, that it weren’t just an excuse to share Olympian gossip over the table. Even if he was jack shit at it; or maybe it was just that he was jack shit compared to her, or maybe he let her win because he liked seein’ her happy more than he liked winning. But she thinks he’s just bad at it, seein’ as he can’t fake the half a minute he spends starin’ at the pieces before tossing it down on the table.  
  


He taught her a great deal of things, mind, when it came to the old games her ma and the rest of the older generation play; such as the joys of losing, if you lost to the right person. Was a gambler at heart, her man. A mighty good one, at that.  
  


“You stink of absinthe.” He growls it into her throat, like he might be able to convince her not to drink if his voice goes deep enough.   
  


“I know.” She gasps, and she feels his stupid hands begin to pull away. Don’t ever touch her when she’s so much as _tipsy,_ and she hates him for it. “You still have that tattoo.” When she first saw it, she felt sick to her stomach. _Please, let it be fake. Let it rub off, somehow._ She knew it would be impossible, and yet she hoped.   
  


“Come off it, ‘Seph.” He growls into her ear, this time, pulling back and away. “Besides, a tattoo can’t make me pretend you’re a whole other person.” He grumbles, with all the grousiness that befits Lord Hades himself. “Matter of fact, the tattoo should make you feel better. You get to act like you’re with someone else, just like you want.”  
  


“I don’t pretend you’re a different person.” She says, arguin', despite knowing its pointless, and Hades just don’t bother to dignify it with an answer. Just as she expected.  
  


Just starts getting dressed again, and perhaps she’s hurt at the rejection; the little intimacy they have. She turns her head to the window, and closes her eyes. As if she can avoid the orange light streaming through their thick curtains. No curtains would ever be thick enough to avoid that light. Her eyes open, and she catches a glimpse of the foundry puking up its fiery guts.   
  


She’d gotten more used to it than she’d like to admit. Had come to expect when it would pour, when it would turn their home that sickly orange color.   
  


Sometimes it would wake her in her sleep. Penetrating every sleep mask she could possibly buy.   
  


She closes her eyes again. Her chest turns hot. The rejection she could deal with. Perhaps if he wasn’t getting dressed again like he was getting ready to leave, ready to leave for _this_ bullshit, then she could understand. Hell, whenever they were too drunk to do anything in the old days, they’d just lie together and chuckle about how whiskey dick could touch even the gods.   
  


She opens her eyes, counts to ten and all. Hadestown is still there.  
  


“I fucking hate your city, you know that?” And Hades just snorts. “You make it so goddamn hard to enjoy anything here.”  
  


“‘Course I know.” He sighs, and he rests his face in her shoulder, and his hands move from her hips, tugging her skirt up, to just holding her ‘round the waist. “I made it for you, though.”  
  


“I wish you didn’t.”  
  


“Isn’t the fact that I did enough for you?” He asks, nosing along the line of her neck. “Any wife would kill for such a gesture.” He purrs, as if convincing her to appreciate it.   
  


“Any husband would appreciate that I want him to fuck me stupid.”  
  


“I don’t want you to be stupid before I fuck you.” He says in turn, tucking her hair back and kissing at her jaw. 

  
“I ain’t stupid.” She points out, because she’s _not._ She knows exactly what she’s doing, and what she wants.  
  


“Right, not stupid. Just drunk. Numb to the feel of me.”  
  


“I ain’t drunk, either. You can put down some tape and I’ll walk straight.”   
  


“Is it so bad, to want you sober?” He murmurs, pressing his lips to her shoulder. The scratchiness of his beard pressing into the bare skin there. “I like you best sober. So sharp. It’s like the old times.”   
  


She knows he’s baiting her. Refuses to answer such an ugly request. And it _is_ a request, though it is framed as a statement. He would _like_ for her to stop her drinking. And if she answers truthfully, this whole little vignette will come to an end. He’s already dressed to leave, and a pathetic part of her doesn’t want him to leave, either. She closes her eyes, and pictures the dark haired man in her mother’s garden. Pretends that this embrace is his.  
  


Same body, different man.  
  


She opens her eyes, and when she sees the dark ink on his arm, she knows that the man she loves is dead. Dead and buried. Burned alongside the fossils of Hades’ shades.  
  


But this stranger-husband of hers, he holds her, and that’s enough, right now. Right now, when she is drunk, yet not drunk enough to hold her own at the sight of her new home.  
  


The shades look like ants, each crawling single file. Little dots on the map. The quiet dark of the underground is gone.   
  


He holds her when the lights brighten so damn much that her eyes water, and it cracks something within her, and when the tears silently stream down her face, he does not judge her. He does not walk away, scoff in disbelief at her lack of gratitude.   
  


Maybe the husband she once knew is still there. If he can still understand, if he can still hold her when the world felt like it was crumbling before her.  
  


He sighs, and when she pulls away, he swipes her eyes with a sad sorta smile. “C’mon, lover. It ain’t so bad.”   
  


She cannot find it in herself to believe him.


End file.
